Facebook will use its new feature “Nearby Friends” for marketing purpose

The most famous social network “Facebook” added a new feature named “nearby friends.” This feature will notify you when you have your Facebook buddies nearby or a restaurant, company or organization (if you have liked their pages). This feature will use your location continuously to keep you updated. The feature needs to be turned on to get this benefit, and if you don’t want to use this feature, can turn it off. Usally this kind of features consumes more power of the device and the battery gets discharged soon, because it keeps the GPS option turned on along with the mobile data or WiFi

Tech Crunch asked the reason behind adding this feature into Facebook. They replied that feature will benefit users in different manners, but finally it ended up making more business as they are going to use collected data (location specific) for marketing purpose. So, it’s certain that they will show you the local ads using your location. For example: if there is a Multiplex nearby, they might show you the ad of a movie being played in that Multiplex. In the same way, you might get notification for clothes, gadgets, and other shops when you are nearby. This can help Facebook to boost their ad revenue, but they have confirmed to Tech Crunch that they will not use the data for marketing purpose at present, but they will do it for sure in the future.

Facebook says that this feature is wise enough in itself and understand when to show the notification. For example: you won’t see the notification for a friend nearby if you visit that particular friend everyday, but when that friend goes to different place nearby, you are more likely to see the notification. You are always free to turn off this feature, but make sure even the feature is turned off Facebook can still track your location whenever it’s required as it had been doing in the past when this feature was not launched.